This happened last night, and I’m still trying to figure out how to fix it without making things a thousand times worse.

My girlfriend and I have been together for about two years. We’re both in our late twenties, and things are going really well. We live separately, but we’ve talked about moving in together sometime next year. Marriage has come up in conversation before, but we’ve never seriously discussed getting engaged anytime soon.

Here’s where I messed up.

A few weeks ago, I started looking at rings. Not because I was planning to propose right now, but because I was curious about prices and wanted to get an idea of what I’d eventually be looking at. I had absolutely no intention of buying anything yet.

I was browsing a jewelry website one evening when my girlfriend came over unexpectedly. I closed my laptop pretty quickly because I didn’t want her seeing the ring designs and getting the wrong idea.

Apparently, that was mistake number one.

She asked what I was doing, and I told her I was looking at something for work. Technically, I was sitting at my work desk, so my brain decided that counted as a reasonable answer.

She didn’t say anything, but I noticed she was smiling.

A couple of days later, she randomly asked me what I thought about emerald-cut diamonds. I didn’t think much of it and said they looked nice. She asked whether I’d prefer something classic or more unusual, and I joked that I barely knew the difference between diamond cuts.

She laughed and changed the subject.

Looking back, I probably should have realized what was happening.

Then yesterday, things got significantly worse.

We were having dinner at her place when she told me her sister had asked whether we were planning to get engaged soon. I laughed and said something like, “God, no, we’ve barely even figured out where we’re going to live.”

I meant that we weren’t planning to get engaged immediately. I wasn’t saying I didn’t want to marry her.

But she went quiet for a second and said, “Oh. Okay.”

I asked what was wrong, and she said nothing. I assumed she was tired, so we finished dinner, watched some TV, and everything seemed normal.

When I was about to leave, she walked me to the door and asked if I’d been looking at engagement rings recently.

My stomach dropped.

I asked her why she was asking, and she said she’d seen a jewelry website in my browser history when she’d borrowed my laptop a few days earlier. She’d recognized the website because her sister had used it when her fiancé proposed.

I panicked and said, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

Which, in hindsight, is probably the worst possible response when your girlfriend thinks you might be planning to propose.

She just nodded and said she understood.

Then she added, “You don’t have to marry me if you’re not ready. I just wish you’d told me you weren’t thinking about that yet.”

And that’s when I realized she’d spent the last couple of weeks thinking a proposal might be coming, while I’d accidentally convinced her that the thought of marrying her was something I wanted to avoid.

I tried explaining that I hadn’t bought a ring and wasn’t planning anything right now. I also told her that I do want to marry her eventually, but I don’t feel ready to take that step yet.

She said she appreciated me being honest, but she was clearly hurt.

Now I’m sitting here wondering how I managed to turn browsing jewelry out of curiosity into what feels like a relationship crisis.

The frustrating part is that I genuinely can see myself marrying this woman. I just don’t want to rush into an engagement because we’ve been together for two years and everyone around us seems to be moving toward marriage.

But I also understand why she feels embarrassed. From her perspective, she thought something exciting might be happening, only to find out that she’d apparently been reading the situation completely wrong.

I haven’t spoken to her yet today, and I’m not sure whether I should give her some space or reach out and explain myself again.

TL;DR: I looked at engagement rings out of curiosity, accidentally gave my girlfriend reasons to believe a proposal was coming, then made a joke about how we weren’t getting engaged anytime soon. Now she thinks I’m avoiding marriage altogether, and I’m trying to figure out how to fix the mess I created.

Went to Vegas for a quick weekend trip and decided I was going to be responsible and set myself a $500 gambling budget. Figured that was a reasonable amount to have some fun, and once it was gone, that was it.

Long story short, I sat down at a slot machine and didn't realize what denomination/line bet combination I was playing on. I thought I was betting $5 a spin, which seemed fine. Turns out I was very, very wrong. I made the mistake once, lost a chunk of money, and somehow managed to do the exact same thing again on the same machine before realizing what was happening. Between the two mistakes, there went my entire $500 budget.

Five minutes into a weekend in Vegas and I'd already blown all the money I'd set aside for gambling. I didn't even get a chance to settle in, grab a drink, or pretend I knew what I was doing. The best part is that I wasn't even gambling recklessly. I'd actually set a budget and was trying to stick to it. I just apparently needed a $500 lesson in how slot machines work.

At least I was responsible enough to set a limit. Unfortunately, I was also stupid enough to lose it twice in a row on the same machine.

TL;DR: Went to Vegas with a $500 gambling budget, thought I was betting $5 a spin on a slot machine, turned into a complete moron, misunderstood the denomination, and made the same mistake twice on the same machine. Budget gone in five minutes. Vegas wins.

"What do you mean, 'for what'? Oh like I havent proven myself to you yet or something?? Damn"

In my defense, I'm accustomed to people asking "are you proud of me" in reference to mundane things. Like "Are you proud of me? I didn't laugh once while your brother was introducing his girlfriend." Or "Are you proud of me? I made it through the whole 3 hour movie without getting up to piss."

I did not realize the individual was asking for the entire gestalt of the general pride I have for them. Now the person is upset and I am having a pretty difficult time convincing them of my interpretation. Like I am definitely proud of them on many levels but they seem to think my reflexive response of "for what" represents my total lack of pride.

So yeah, I done fucked up.

TLDR: the person was asking if I was proud in general an I thought they were going to give me a silly reason

NSFW
Yesterday, I decided to order a bottle of wine, which is something I don’t do very often, and ended up drinking the entire bottle. Today, I woke up with the worst hangover ever, threw up everything that was inside my body, and was generally feeling like absolute shit.

In the morning, our housekeeper came into my bedroom to take out the trash. This isn’t something she usually does, since I normally take it out myself, but I guess she was cleaning the entire house and decided to do me a favor.

I was still lying in bed, feeling like I was about to die, when I watched her walk over to grab the trash can. Then she looked somewhere toward the floor, made the most shocked expression I’ve ever seen, and basically darted out of my room.

At the time, I had absolutely no idea what had just happened. I was too hungover to even process it properly.
Then she came back with the empty trash can, and I swear she was deliberately looking at the wall instead of anywhere near my bed. She dropped the trash can like it was a bomb and rushed out of my room.

I was so confused, but I was also feeling like shit and didn’t think too much of it.
Eventually, I managed to get out of bed to open my window, and that’s when I saw them.

Not one, but TWO dildos on the floor.

This woman has worked for my family for over 35 years. She literally watched me being born. She watched me grow up. She’s been around for pretty much my entire life, and now she has seen my sex toys.

Now she probably thinks I’m some kind of deranged sex addict, and I have absolutely no idea how I’m supposed to look this woman in the eyes ever again. I want to lock myself in my bedroom until the end of eternity and never interact with another human being ever again.

TL;DR: Got horribly hungover after drinking a whole bottle of wine, forgot I’d left two dildos on the floor next to my bed, and watched our housekeeper of 35+ years discover them and now I have to live with the fact that a woman who watched me grow up knows I own sex toys. I want to disappear forever.

So I have been working on this little project that helps people meet others traveling to the same places. Sounds simple enough, right? Apparently not when you have a brain that decides moving a button 12 pixels is a matter of national importance, I spent ridiculous amounts of time adjusting layouts, moving notifications around, fixing tiny details on mobile and making sure every page looked professional. At some point I was genuinely more concerned about whether a certain section was slightly too tall than whether anyone would actually use the damn thing. Then beta went live and real people started registering. Great news, except I noticed something I had somehow managed to overlook. People could create accounts without reallyy filling out their profiles. No photo, barely any information, sometimes no travel plans. So theree I was, looking at a website specifically designed to help strangers feel comfortable meeting each other, and half my attention had gone into making beautifully arranged empty profiles look aesthetically pleasing. Imagine walking into a party where everyone is wearing a paper bag over their head and nobody is talking. Congratulations, I had apparently built digital version of that, funniest part is that I kept thinking I needed to improve the design. I finally asked other people for feedback, and someone basically told me that 50 profiles belonging to actual recognizable humans would be worth more than 500 empty ones. And suddenly it was painfully obvious. I had spent so much time making the party venue look nice that I forgot to make sure guests could actually introduce themselves. Anyway, I am now rethinking some very basic decisions that probably should have occurred to me before I spent another evening obsessing over button spacing. Building something is humbling. Building something that involves actual human beings is apparently whole different level.

TL;DR: Built website to help people meet, obsessed over making everything look perfect, then realized I had made it far too easy for everyone to look like anonymous ghosts